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IFL 2nd Quarter RTT

The format was… imperfect. Due to the excessive squeaking of a couple of squeaky wheels, the format was changed at the last minute to something that was pretty clearly put together by a Fantasy player without much familiarity with 40K. Given that that’s what the TO was (non-40K-playing fellow council member Ben was doing the 40K playing council members a solid and running the 40K tournament so they could all play), this isn’t enormously surprising.

That’s not to say that it was a bad format. Just not perfect.

All of the games had a special scenario rule. Victory conditions were based entirely on Victory Points (with a margin of >= 300 points required for a win vs. a draw), and there were a couple of bonus victory points.

The problem with relying on VP is that they remove all of the checks that KP impose on the game. They might not be perfect, but they really do provide a disincentive to loading up on transports and minimum strength units.

Also, it was at 1,800, which is a weird points level. I’m quite certain this wasn’t intentional: just a non-40K player quickly trying to change tournament rules while 1) annoyed and 2) on vacation.

In each game, I blew every single Powers of Chaos roll, and ended up with my Reserves Wave coming in at the beginning of each game. Once is odds. Three times is just goofy. The scatter dice made up for it, though, as I nailed an unbelievable number of Deep Strike rolls: I think I don’t think I scatter more than twice in a single game.

Scenario rules involved a single Night Fight-style roll that affected all units on the table and got progressively worse as the game progressed. Turn 1 was 6d6+6″ on down to Turn 7 as d6+6″.

It’s weird; every time I have a Disagreement with another IFL member, it turns out that within a couple of weeks, I’m at a tournament at Game Parlor Woodbridge playing them and the game proves theraputic.

Jeff and I had a very good game that, given the circumstances, was much closer than it should have been.

Mechanized is something that gives my army heartburn, and mechanized Eldar is even worse. Jeff decided to throw caution to the wind and get in my face with the Guardians. This actually worked quite well: a 5+(i) is still only a 5+ save, after all.

There was a lot more back and forth than there needed to be in that game, and I’m thankful for it. It certainly made it a fun game.

The range restriction on shooting didn’t handicap him nearly as much as it could have because I was all up in his face as quickly as possible. The movement penalty was a huge problem for me, though. Early on his Librarian and the Terminators assaulted the Bloodthirster, who pasted the Librarian as quickly as possible. (Null Zone bad!)

The terminators, and then Shrike, ended up chewing their way through the small unit of Bloodletters before getting stuck in with the large unit in a combat that lasted the rest of the game. Bloodthirsters died to massed fire, which is usually what kills them.

In the end, it was a pretty close game. Had my last Bloodcrusher survived long enough to toss some attacks on Shrike in the last round, we’d probably have drawn. A very good game, though.

Scenario involved d3 Strength 6 meteors falling from the sky and hitting non-vehicle units on a 6 and vehicles on a 5 and a 6. Ultimately, they really didn’t cause anything to happen, though.

This game was… not great. Scott’s models weren’t even in the neighborhood of WYSIWYG. I’m down with the occasional, “This Stormbolter is really a Heavy Flamer,” sort of thing. This was altogether different. Guys had weapons that they didn’t have, all sorts of things.

Also, he started his entire army in Reserve. Now, I get that this sounds a little hypocritical coming from a Daemon player (trust me: I’d love to be able to bring them all in at the beginning of the game), but I’ve found that keeping your entire army in reserve is a great way to start the game off on the wrong foot.

Finally, his converted Storm Raven was… let’s charitably call it enormous. Built out of a Star Wars shuttle with a Rhino stuck on the front, it was at least 4″x12″. That would probably be okay, except then he stuck Corbulo with his aura effect in it… that aura had a range that covered something like a third of the table!

I wiped out his Devastators with a Soul Grinder in the second turn, which meant he really didn’t have anything with which to deal with my Bloodthirsters. He threw his Dreadnoughts at them. This was, in a word, awesome. Khorne created Bloodthirsters with the express purpose of completely bitchifying Dreadnoughts. The Furioso wouldn’t even get the chance to think about swinging before the ‘Thirster would vomit five penetrating hits into its face. The sheer pwnitude involved in ‘Thirster-on-Furioso action was enough to really improve my attitude about the game.

Overall, I made it out of the day 1/2/0, which isn’t anything to complain about. I had two good games, plus a third that ended on an up-note.

More significantly, I won the Player’s Choice award! It was supposed to be a conflation of all of the various soft scores, but it looks like it worked out to be mostly an Appearance ranking thing. I’m very flattered and proud about this. Honestly, I think the display board is what pushed it over the edge: there were a lot of really awesome armies there (like Doug’s and Kevin’s, which were my two favorites).